The fourth quarter market share numbers from Kantar are out, and the whooshing sound you hear is BlackBerry circling the drain. The period from October through December included the failure of the Canadian manufacturer to complete the $9 a share privatization bid from its largest stockholder. As a result, BlackBerry had to settle for $1 billion in capital and the replacement of CEO Thorsten Heins with turnaround expert John Chen. In the fourth quarter in the U.S., Kanter shows BlackBerry losing 55% of its market share from the same period in 2012. BlackBerry finished the year with a .4% slice of the U.S. smartphone market, down from the prior year's .9%.

Android and Windows Phone were the big winners in Q4

Even in regions where BlackBerry had a fairly good share of the smartphone market, things collapsed during the final three months of the year. In Latin America, where BlackBerry controlled 10.3% of the smartphone market at the end of 2012, the company saw a huge decline to 2.8% at the end of 2013. Incidentally, Android had a monumental quarter in that very area, as Google's open source OS finished the period with an amazing 83.5% of the market compared with 61.6% the year before.

In the U.S., Android made it over the 50% mark, rising to 50.6% from 46.2%. Apple's iOS suffered a fairly large drop stateside, with a market share that declined from 49.7% to 43.9%. The combination allowed Android to leap frog over its major rival for the top spot in the U.S. But it wasn't only the states where iOS lost share. In Italy, Apple's mobile OS saw its share of the smartphone market crash from 23.1% to 12.8% with Android having nearly a corresponding rise. In five major European countries, iOS saw its market share decline from 23.7% to 18.5% while Android's share increased from 62.9% to 68.6%.

Windows Phone showed momentum in the quarter. In Europe, Microsoft's mobile OS had 10.3% of the market, up from 5.6% a year ago. In the U.K., the figures showed Windows Phone with an 11.3% slice of the market at the end of 2013, up from 5.9% during the same time in 2012. And in the U.S., the platform took its 2.4% market share at the end of the fourth quarter of 2012, and ran it up to 4.3% at the end of the fourth quarter in 2013.

let's take a theoretical pub in some small neighborhood in london before mcdonalds. let's say that all the local residents visit this pub regularly throughout the week to eat, drink alcohol, and socialize. let's say the number of people is seventeen regulars.

then mcdonalds comes. this attracts a huge number of people. every week, one thousand people are regulars. throughout all of this, the seventeen regulars to the pub do not change. in fact, due to population growth, three new regulars started coming to the pub.

clearly the pub has lost market share. at the beginning it had 100% of the market. at the end, they only have a blackberry-esque 2%.

even though the number of pub-goers increased by three people, by your logic we can conclude that it appears everyone is moving on from the pub? would you care to explain that?

Yeah, but the "pub" is tiny and isn't publicly traded so they have no numbers for marketshare, AND Android was never already HUGE like MCD and then just moved into the "neighborhood", this has been a long battle and the numbers show public demand changing.

With Blackberry dying and its share up for grabs the whole market is in a bit of a chaotic period with companies trying different solutions to match BB's business apps/Email security/(former) reliability prowess. I have ZERO doubt it'll fluctuate again with new ideas and companies bought out and the "pub" will show better numbers.

Do you ever listen, or just run off at the mouth? Apple has consistently said that their controlling as little as 1% of the market is fine, cause their business model is based on profit margin, not market share fool. They have roughly 12% market share, and roughly as much as 80% of the profits. Once again Einstein, 12% market share 80% profits, cause their business model isn't based on market share, it's based on profit margin. This is why apple doesn't compete in the low end, last years flagship is this years lower cost model. Please please please, do some research before you spout off at the mouth. Once again profit margin, not market share. Now go to the chalkboard and write that 500 times, or no play time for you.

Why are you proud of the corporation making more money off of you than the competition? They control less of the market but make most of the money means they're shafting someone (usually customers) pretty hard. But instead of asking for your money's worth you're more than willing to settle for less and then find excuses to defend that BS (5c is great because it's so colorful... Yea screw that).

Ok dude let me check you rite here rite now, cuz all you do is attack apple and anyone who says something non anti. First of all IDGAFlyingF what apple, google, Samsung, moto, MS, Nokia or any other company does. I don't care how they make their money, or who the hell they make it from, as long as my wife, my son, and I like our purchase F all that other mess. You think I'm this sprung on apple fanboy, I assure you I'm not. If apple closed their doors today rite now, I simply move to second best, which is Samsung, if they close I go to third best (HTC). I don't give a F what you say about me, think about me, or post about me. I care about what myself and my family wants and likes. All this I settle for this and that crap, I settle for the smile it puts on my family's face, when they're satisfied with what they wanted. Capital F all that mess you're talking, worry about you and yours, and stay the F outta mine, and that's real. Now kindly go back to your useless pathetic hating of apple on PA, which accomplishes absolutely nothing. All I did was supply a link. I'll be proud when jr walks across the stage and gets his diploma, get lost.

c'mon darkjd, finalflash was correct.. you just going off on him cos he checkmated you.. first of all, you didn't just put up links.. you started trashing others and defending apple by talking about profit margin first as apple's focus when this article is clearly talking only about market share.. then finalflash made a very valid point about apple's high profits provided by apple customers.. so.. its not about attacking apple but you blindly defending apple for whatever reason.. oh well.. it was bound to happen sooner or later.. denial.. the first stage of grief from apple losing to android

I'm not concerned with what the article stated, that's not apples business model once again. I'm also not concerned about checkmates or any of that nonsense. Sell me what I want, and keep it pushin. I also don't give a damn about apple losing to android, I don't work for, own shares in or own either. Simply doesn't matter, mrs jedii and jedii jr do dude. I DO NOT live in PA, I live in an area called the real world. In the real world we worry about our family, not billion dollar tech giants who don't give a damn about us, only our money. Holla at me, when Sammy moto HTC apple, and others start giving out checks to their fanboys for buying phones, and when they give you shares for buying phones, and when the CEO's call you personally and thank you for buying a damn phone. Until then go to post #46 and do those last two words.

Android and WP both gain thanks to the low end devices. WP has the Lumia 520/521 and currently the 525. Android has a bunch of cheap devices and we currently got the Moto G (pretty much the king of cheap phones for now).
A lot of people buy cheap phones (sometimes as backup phones or just an extra toy), so it's not a big surprise that Android and WP are stepping up.

what would this actually prove? force of numbers is meaningless. it doesn't mean that it is a good or a bad device, just that people are using it. it would mean about as much as this comparison. it only says what people are doing, not why.

apple and all other companies mention that they sold bla bla, but in fact they shipped that amount and not all the units sold
because of that we see their market share coming down every sindgle quarter !

A drop in market-share doesn't necessarily mean a drop in sales. Apple could have sold a billion iPhones last quarter, but if Android sold 2 billion, obviously Apple's share would drop. The results don't show it, but it's almost certain that the smartphone market is still expanding.

People get really, really confused about a very simple concept. Apple is one company. They put out a couple phones per year. Android phones come from dozens of companies that put out a hundred phones per year. Apple is still the dominate company. Who really cares how many low-end devices with no profit margin carry Android? Because it's free....

no u r confuse....how is apple the more dominating company..there r more android device than ios device.... it doesnt matter how many company selling android phones.... the fact there more android phones than ios phones ... this is not apple vs one of the company that make android phones this is ios vs android.... to make it super easy lets say apple vs google... and if apple keep losing 6% market share every year lets see how the next 10years go.... and the lower their market shares go the higher the price of there devices will be so they can keep up profit

...i don't see how anyone can conclude doom and gloom for any company based solely on market share. how much did the market grow? because there are seven billion people and only like a billion smartphone users. even if apple's market share worldwide fell to ten percent, it still could be that the amount of phones they were selling doubled, just other os' phones grew significantly more.

bottom line, while this is interesting, especially about preference and what not, if you are talking about windows phone or ios becoming irrelevant...i don't see what market share has to do with that. especially because the largest area of growth is in the entry-level area and apple doesn't even compete in that market. the only real competitor to android there is windows phone. there isn't anything to conclude from this either way.

my big take away is that more people are buying phones, and more phone companies are becoming bigger players in the market, which in my mind is outstanding. i hope apple and samsung lose more marketshare. it just works out well for everyone.

anyone rooting for apple or samsung to go belly up is mindlessly unintelligent and really just rooting for the destruction of their own faction. the only intelligent thing is to want all the companies to do outstandingly well. i cannot think of a major player that doesn't bring something significant to the market that pushes the others to create better, more interesting devices. i say long live everyone. anyone mindlessly advocating a single brand (of phone or os) to the destruction of all the others is on the mental level of a child.

this is not apple vs samsung tho.... this ios vs android... so the more company come on board and sell android phone its just str8 bad news for ios.... apple should release a open source version of there os... that will help there market share... google saw this coming....

Maybe Apple lost market share because people who were waiting for the iP5 to move to mid-tier after the release of the 5S instead got the middle-fingered wave from Tim and company? The iP5C is the crappy edition of the iP5, and it is obvious for all to see.

Once those who were waiting for the iP5 to become mid-tier were alienated by the iP5C(rap), converting them to Android or WP became much easier.

It was always Microsoft's strategy to sell to new users rather than pull people away from Apple or Google. If they do lull a few a way while getting the majority of the new users then Microsoft has a chance to gain momentum over time.

Manilla has no current plans to bring out a windows phone app. Please email these guys to change their direction.

It's not surprising. The flagships are no longer driving the market, the low end is. You can see it in the earnings reports. Windows Phone flagships aren't selling in any meaningful numbers, but the 520/620 models are. The iPhone and Galaxy models are still selling, but the market expansion of the low end is outpacing the flagship growth. What you will see to combat this is more companies looking to flood the low end of the market to get smartphones in hands, and the only companies that really benefit from this are Google and Microsoft. The low-end, low-profit segment is not where OEMs want to make their living, because you can see from the PC commoditization trend that even volume doesn't drive much profit.

Apple has no real presence in the low end, so they will lose market share as the market expands faster at the low end. This morning it will be "Apple is dead," and then after the earnings call, it will be "Apple rules," when neither is particularly true.

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